April 3, 1934

Jane Goodall was born in London, England.

Age One

Jane was given a stuffed monkey, which she still has today.

1952

Jane graduated high school in 1952 but she couldn't afford university.

May, 1956

Jane's friend invited her to her family farm in Kenya. She worked as a waitress to save money for a boat fare.

April 2, 1957

Jane at 23 years old, traveled to Kenya by boat.

Louis Leakey and Jane

Jane met famous anthropologist and paleontologist Louis Leakey. He eventually hired her as his assistant and became her mentor. She traveled to Olduvai Gorge in Tanzania with him and his team. "I could have learned a whole lot more about fossils and become a paleontologist. But my childhood dream was as strong as ever–somehow I must find a way to watch free, wild animals living their own, undisturbed lives–I wanted to learn things that no one else knew, uncover secrets through patient observation. I wanted to come as close to talking to animals as I could.".

She began her chimpanzee study by Lake Tanganyika in Tanzania. 

July 4, 1960

Jane and her mother, who was with her for three months, went to the chimpanzee reserve at Gombe National Park in Western Tanzania.

October 30, 1961

She observed for the first time that chimps hunt meat and aren't vegetarians.

November 4, 1961

She watched two of the chimps she named, David Greybeard and Goliath, make tools to eat food. The chimps would insert a stick into termite mounds and scoop out termites to eat.

1962

She was accepted to Cambridge University where she got her Ph.D. in ethology, which is the study of animal behaviour in 1965

1964

She married a National Geographic photographer and divorced him in 1974.

1975

She married again to a director of the Gombe National Park